Poet: Elvis McGonagall
Tartan troubador Elvis McGonagall describes himself as a poet, twit & armchair revolutionary, who can disagree?
There is no better explanation than that given on ...
On the 3rd of March 1960 Elvis Presley spent two hours at Prestwick Airport, Scotland en route home from national service in Germany. Big Agnes McGonagall, a starstruck baggage handler, was left with the memory of a lifetime. Nine months later, on 22nd December, 1960, Elvis McGonagall was born on Carousel B in the North Terminal. Coincidence? Not according to Big Aggie. Stuffing wee Elvis into a duffle bag, she set off in hot pursuit of Mr Presley and her American Dream. The rest is histrionics.
If you want to find out more, why not ?
Can i make a heartfelt plea for poor old Fi Glover (of whom i am an admirer by the way) to be given a new trailer - i will go completely mad if i have to listen to 'finding something stuck to your shoe' again. Do you really want the programme to be endlessly associated with dog messes? SURELY someone could think up something new????
Complain about this postFantastic! something fun for saturday morning at last. I don't know who I love more, Fi Glover or Verity Sharp. (I know Verity Sharp hasn't been on Sat Live yet but she will be).The antidotes to porn sluts, fashion sticks and Jennifer Aniston
Complain about this postCare? for the elderly.
I have just come away from a meeting with my mother’s consultant, her social worker and her community psychiatric nurse wondering if officialdom, in the guise of care for the elderly has finally taken leave of its senses altogether.
I made what seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable request. Can somebody help me out if I take my 84-year-old Mum who suffers from vascular dementia, from her care home to visit my 84-year-old Dad in his care home and she refuses to leave? The answer is ‘No’, even though it is much more likely that she would go quietly for somebody ‘official’. No one can help us because of rules, regulations, the law, funding, insurance, etc, blah, etc, etc, blah, blah.
However, according to them, it would be acceptable under common law for members of her family to forcibly remove her on the grounds that she has dementia and would be behaving unreasonably. I cannot bear even to think about the immense distress this particular option would cause to both my parents.
This brings me to the other option I am invited to consider; that Mum is never taken to visit Dad’s home at all. Dad is suffering from cancer and heart problems. Currently we take him to visit Mum, but the time will soon come when he is not well enough for us to do this. Quite reasonably, he wants to carry on seeing her. After 64 years of marriage, they still love each other. They are only apart because my Dad is too frail to cope with Mum on a full-time basis.
I am not cruel enough to deny my dying Dad the chance of seeing Mum. That leaves me with the last option, which is to hope and pray that Mum co-operates. She is unable to understand why they are not together and it is quite possible she will insist on staying with Dad…….
Dad has cared devotedly for Mum for many years as she has become more and more difficult and aggressive without any help from officialdom. Indeed, he nearly lost his life because they refused to intervene when he was becoming seriously ill and being badly abused by my poor demented Mum.
Things might have gone better if officialdom had actually listened to what their family said, but it seems that the default attitude is to believe that the family does not have the expertise to assess the situation properly. We only know and love them!
Needless to say, my father, who was in the RAF in World War II, who has worked and paid his taxes all his life and Mum, who has likewise taught and paid her taxes except for when she took time out to look after us, will have to pay the full price for their care. Like many others, they will have to hand over their life savings and sell their home. This upsets them a lot because they believed that they had already paid for their care through their taxes. Both their homes charge more than the government will pay for somebody who has no assets, so they are also subsidising somebody else’s place.
In their worst nightmares, my parents never imagined that the government would try to stop them using their hard-earned money to give their usual generous presents, pocket money to the youngsters and help to any family member at university or in financial difficulties. However, I have been told that I should limit their spending to the very small allowance that a person who is having their fees paid by the Local Authority is allowed each week. If I don’t, I risk having to pay the Local Authority the difference between the allowance and anything they spend above this if they run out of money to pay their home fees. My Dad summed it up nicely. They thought they had paid for their care once, now they are paying for it again and subsidising someone else. If they want to enjoy spending any of their savings, I will end up paying some more in the future. I take my hat off to Gordon Brown for some exceedingly creative accounting. He is certainly encouraging me to save up for my old age!
As you can imagine, I have been reading articles and listening to programs on care for the elderly with great interest. I was told at this morning’s meeting that both the hospital and social services are having to cut back on what they currently offer.
It’s mind-blowing stuff, this care? for the elderly.
Thank you very much, Fi, for giving me somewhere to let off steam on a day when I badly need it.
Complain about this post